Unscratched
by chaos Leader
Summary: Life is hard for young Ishiro "Itchy" Kurokawa. He is thrust suddenly into an alien, unfamiliar environment, not trusted by the locals, asked to perform tasks that are likely beyond even his great talents; and that's all BEFORE the bombs fell. It couldn't go any further downhill from there, could it? A series of short vignettes set in the delightfully strange world of Fallout.
_I left my heart in San Francisco
High on a hill, it calls to me  
To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars  
The morning fog may chill the air, I don't care_

 _My love waits there in San Francisco  
Above the blue and windy sea  
When I come home to you, San Francisco  
Your golden sun will shine for me..._

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 _Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, California.  
October 23, 2077.  
6:35 am local time._

A jukebox nearby played a gentle jazz song, most of the lyrics Ishiro Kurokawa didn't recognize, not being especially proficient in his English. He understood 'San Francisco' and a few scattered words here and there, but not much else, not that it concerned him greatly at the moment.

Ishiro and a group of his anxious coworkers sat crowded around table in a diner for an early morning breakfast. For most of them, it was their very first time in America, and among their first taste of an authentic American-style breakfast, full of pancakes, fried eggs, thick-cut bacon, hot coffee and maple syrup. Among the tightly-packed group of Japanese, there was one highly conspicuous American, who spoke to the group in somewhat clumsy, but understandable Japanese.

"I'm not so sure about this name, 'Pip-Boy BS', you need to think of another one," he said in a gruff tone, "you know what 'BS' stands for in English, don't you?"

"It means 'Better-Screen'," one of the others insisted, "It is exactly what it is."

"Yes, the new flip-open liquid-crystal display is much more compact and efficient than the standard cathode ray tube monitor," another chimed in, Ishiro recognized him as his immediate superior in the company, "thus, the device can be made a fraction of the size and weight, and be capable of much greater processing power. It will have all the functionality of the classic Pip-Boy, and more! Isn't that right, Ishiro?"

"Yeah, yeah..." he responded with an absentminded nod.

"How about 'Pip-Boy X' for the name?" one of Ishiro's other coworkers suggested, "or 'Pip-Boy Zero'..."

Ishiro wasn't paying especially close attention to the discussions at the table, and instead concentrated singularly on a small device laid out in front of him: the aforementioned 'Pip-Boy BS', or probably something else now. On the outside, it was an innocent enough looking gray rectangle of reinforced plastic, with a few knobs and dials on the right side and the standard Pip-Boy interface plug. With its screen flipped open however, it revealed the slim display itself, along with a full miniature keyboard below it, and a small selection of other displays and readouts, including the all-but-required Geiger-counter and radio tuner.

Times were dire for the Miyazaki Industrial Group, which was the technology company back in Japan that Ishiro Kurosawa and his coworkers around the table worked for, right up until about a week ago at any rate. Ishiro and these coworkers were developing a device they had hoped could be a direct competitor to RobCo's Pip-Boy, something that could potentially far surpass it in-fact.

As the story went, Mr. Robert House, head of RobCo Industries, became aware of what this little division of the Miazaki Group was working on. Rather than try to sabotage the project, or develop their own improvement of the Pip-Boy, Mr. House simply decided to acquire the development team, and make it part of RobCo itself. Between the lack of faith the executives of the Miyazaki Group had in the project from the start, and the very generous offer Mr. House made to bring them under the RobCo umbrella, it was an easy decision to hand the project over to the Americans. It did however mean the product needed to be re-branded as a newer, better Pip-Boy.

Ishiro was not overly concerned with the corporate politics of the handover; he'd need to brush up on his English, and that was about it. However, he had much more pressing issues of this transition to worry about, and it was immediately in front of him, taunting mercilessly him at every opportunity.

As part of the transition, the development team brought with them to America a functioning prototype of this 'newer better Pip-Boy' to present to Mr. House as a mock-up, or at least it was supposed to be functional. Ishiro Kurosawa, the team's most talented engineer, was given the daunting task of developing, modifying, and otherwise integrating the standardized Pip-Boy Operating System with the new hardware.

The result so far has been a bizarre, highly unstable hybridization of the hardware's original programming with the Pip-Boy OS that simply refused to work. Every time Ishiro fixed one issue, another ten would spring up in its place. Every time the Pip-Boy OS booted up well, and appeared to work just fine for a time, the slightest provocation would cause it to crash and corrupt itself all over again. A whole briefcase at Ishiro's feet was full of nothing but notes he'd taken, detailed schematics and information on the device, and several specialized developer boot-loader holotapes provided by RobCo for the OS. He needed time to put it all together, to put _something_ together, and he just didn't have it.

Before the trip, Ishiro assured everyone that he could have the mock-up ready to present to Mr. House, as long as he constantly worked with it, which he did, even at breakfast before the meeting. Yet with all the setbacks and all the pitfalls he faced, Ishiro Kurokawa was starting to realize he would never be able to have a mock-up prototype ready for Mr. House in time, and this whole venture was going to be a complete and utter _disaster–_

...

At that instant, a very loud, very troubling sound jarred Ishiro and everyone from what they were doing, and locked them all in a brief moment of fearful disbelief: it was the rising and falling whir of the air-raid siren. The city of San Francisco was under attack; the war had arrived on American shores. For a brief moment, Ishiro was actually relieved by this, since he wouldn't have to worry about this dysfunctional prototype, and Mr. House's disapproval.

"No," the American at the table said under his breath, his eyes wide in horror, "it can't be now, it's far too _soon..._ "

"What do we do?" one of Ishiro's coworkers asked.

"We go to the shelter!" the American ordered, "Let's move!"

Ishiro hastily packed the malfunctioning Pip-Boy into the briefcase with the notes and holotapes, then ran outside with his coworkers after the American into the street outside. It was cold, and foggy, painting the dense urban cityscape in an eerie pale gray mist. The cable-car nearby screeched to a halt in its tracks; most of the passengers scattered and panicked, while a few begged the driver to keep the tram going.

People began streaming out of every single building and into the street, while the already dense traffic of cars and other vehicles rushed even faster, with the blaring of their horns nearly drowning out the air-raid siren itself. As the streets were swiftly choked by a rush of terrified people, Ishiro had the misfortune to witness a young man struck by a rushing Corvega not more than a few feet in front of him. The poor man bounced right off the vehicle as it passed, screaming in agony before his head hit the curb, where it cracked open with a sickening _crunch,_ spilling blood and other grisly pulpy–

That was all the young engineer could take, and without even thinking he vomited on the spot. He collapsed to the sidewalk, emptying his breakfast onto the concrete in a painful, gruesome convulsion.

He didn't even have tome to collect himself before one of the coworkers hoisted him up to his feet, shouting, "Ishiro! We have to move!"

Everyone else was shouting too, in frantic Japanese, "There's too many people!"

"We'll never make it!" another screamed.

"The shelter will fill up before we get there!"

"We're going to a private shelter Mr. House built not far from here!" the American bellowed to the group, "There _will_ be room–"

 _BOOM!_

At once, a sudden and mighty blast of wind blew all the fog away, staggering many people by the sheer force of it. In the distance, over the water and all around, many towering mushroom clouds had sprung all across San Francisco bay, looming over the cities and suburbs on the other side–

Something unthinkable began to happen, even more-so than the mortal peril already upon them all. A bomb, or several, had to have been detonated submerged in the water, because the entire bay itself surged and swelled. Then a great surging wall of seawater rushed out and up into the city, right at Ishiro and the group...

As the roar of the suddenly rushing sea mingled with the people's screams of terror and the wailing of sirens, Ishiro Kurokawa quickly began to realize that –like the great cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki so long before, like Tel Aviv barely a few decades prior, and now San Francisco– war... war never changes–

Quicker than he could believe, the rush of icy cold seawater blasted the hapless young engineer off his feet, and there was nothing...

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Ishiro was dead.

He couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't feel. It was all dark, all silent, with no sense of time. He must have been dead: no other explanation made sense.

The deceased young man had not given any thought to the prospect of an afterlife before, and even now couldn't quite believe what he was thinking. Yet the fact that he was at least partly self-aware meant that death wasn't quite the end, though he really wish it were the case if this was all it was. Hell, as it turned out, was not fire and brimstone, not everlasting pain, not immediate 'suffering' as it could be quantified. Hell was instead a vast, infinite, endless nothingness: a sheer uncertain boredom, unawareness, unknown...

Ishiro was dead.

...

He heard movement: not much, but a kind of thump and low rumble. It sounded like it was above him...

Ishiro _wasn't_ dead?

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 **Unscratched**

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Author Notes:

Hello Fallout fans! This is a little something that's bounced around in my head for a while, and I figure now is as good a time as any to put it to words. It's loosely based around a character I used once in a Fallout RPG that was very dear to me. Through the lens of this character, I plan to take a look at all sorts of things in the Fallout series: some seen in canon, some left untouched by official sources.

We'll see where this goes from here. Feel free to leave a review if you like; you made it this far, after all.

Thanks again!


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